


All I do is Dream of You

by PaulAtreDeezNuts



Series: A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Not in any universe, Not in this universe, Past Rape/Non-con, Period-Typical Homophobia, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, and they stayed till the end of the line, canon is dead long live the fanon, fixit, kinda? but not really? because canon is dead, shockingly progressive and anachronistic Peggy Carter, steve rogers would never let bucky stay with hydra are you fucking kidding me, they got their dance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-10 15:51:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaulAtreDeezNuts/pseuds/PaulAtreDeezNuts
Summary: [Engame spoilers so like, don't read if you don't want spoilers][last chance spoilers below]After returning to 1945 Steve and Peggy rescued Bucky from Hydra. They could save him from becoming the Winter Solder but his time as a POW still has ramifications. Steve struggles with the knowledge of what Bucky could have become, and the trauma of his time in the future. Peggy kicks ass, takes names, gives hugs, and generally is the glue of sanity that holds together their mixed, troubled, traumatized home.





	1. Summer

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the 1934 song - here's the version I listened to while writing: https://youtu.be/9-RfAlQZK08
> 
> Rape/noncon is past tense, referenced from Bucky's time as a POW

Bucky sat on the fire escape, smoking peacefully and soaking in the lights of the city. It was warm and humid and his hair was in the process of melting out of its neat shape into something sloppy and soft.

It was Friday night so Steve and Peggy were still dancing somewhere bright and loud and too close and hot. When it got to be too much Bucky had kissed Peggy's hand, bit his lower lip so that only Steve could see, and walked home with his thoughts.

Steve had been changed by the future. He wasn't as quick to fight, he was quieter. He was sweeter. He hummed like honeybees, low and warm and soft, when he wrapped his arms around Bucky at the door of their room. He could still be a snarky little shit, could still drive anybody up the wall with his obstinate insistence that he always knew best, but he wasn't made of spit and sandpaper anymore. It was a good look on him. 

Bucky had gone the other way. The chill of Siberia hadn't left him, even two years after Steve had unburied him sometimes Bucky still felt like he was deep and cold underground, mean and bloody and being sharpened into something with cruel teeth. In the warm dancehall Bucky had felt the press of straps and the dumb dead weight of his prosthesis and it pulled him underground, someplace full of bright white lights and grasping hands instead of warm neon and tapping toes. It didn't belong. It was unnatural and a part of him and alien and he could hold up his shoulder and guide a dame through a dance but he couldn't fold his fingers around Steve's heavy hand or trace a feather-light touch over Peggy's knee with the clanking, ugly mass of wood and steel and leather. 

So he sat on the fire escape and let the steamy heat of the night chase away the touch of winter. He had shucked off his jacket as soon as he was in the door, his shirt and the foreign lump of fake Bucky followed it immediately.

He watched the lights of the city his undershirt, smoking silently with his hair getting messy and his face getting hard. 

He waited in the sticky air until the sun started to redden the sky and he'd long run out of cigarettes.

Peg and Steve had come in hours before and gone to their room, feet moving in time across the living room, still dancing.

The story the lights told didn't change, Bucky didn't look for another story. The city was full of lovers and mothers and cops and robbers and Bucky sat above it. He heard noises in the kitchen and smelled coffee but ignored it until Steve leaned out the window and offered a steaming mug.

"Not too hot for coffee out here, pal?"

Bucky took the cup and shook his head.

Steve pulled his massive shoulders out of the small opening and squirmed to fill up the space next to Bucky on the crate he kept outside to prevent the bars from permanently numbing his ass. Steve smelled like flowers and vanilla and like fresh, hot bread - the delicate touch of Peggy's perfume and the much more frank scent of her body.

"Did you get any sleep at all, Buck?"

He shook his head again.

"You want me to come lay down with you?"

Bucky shrugged. 

Steve didn't speak, just sipped his own cup of black coffee. He'd added heavy cream and three teaspoons of sugar to Bucky's. Bucky liked things warm, he liked things sweet, he liked things soft. He liked Steve. He liked Peggy.

He didn't like himself so much.

Steve gave him space and let him sit in the gradually brightening day until he was ready to talk.

"Wish I could be like her for you."

He said it out of nowhere. They'd been sharing silence for ten minutes.

"Whaddya mean?"

He shrugged his whole shoulder and stared at his stump.

"She can be pretty and soft. Stay at the dance. She don't get mean when there's too much noise. She ain't gonna throw a punch if someone backs into her."

Steve chuckled.

"Have you met Peggy? She'd throw a punch if somebody looked at her funny."

Bucky shrugged again. 

"But she can stay out. She can go to work and give you missions and be a person instead of a mess sitting on the stoop all night staring at shadows."

Steve leaned into Bucky, nuzzling into his neck and humming like a honeybee at him.

"There might be something in the shadows," Steve said. "I know why you stare. It's okay. You don't gotta be like Peggy for me to love you like crazy, Buck. Love you like crazy anyway. Nothin' could stop me."

Bucky took a sip of his sweet coffee, so thick and rich it tasted like ice cream heated over a stove. Bucky was always cold but burned like a furnace and ran through food like a show hog. Steve was the same but still wanted his coffee black.

Steve kissed Bucky's neck slow and quiet, his head tucked down where no one could see from the surrounding windows if they happened to be looking out.

"Don't deserve you," Bucky said, a little hitch catching in the words. "You're. I can't be good enough for you."

Steve plucked the coffee cup out of his hand and set it inside the window.

"You're good enough for everything. You're a fuckin' prince, honey." He moved his face and pressed his lips to the the ticklish spot where the smooth skin of Bucky's neck gave way to the soft, velvet fuzz of his hair. "Come to bed, baby."

"You're gonna make me come out and say it, aren't you?"

Steve's face grew a line between his thick brows, a rocky stubbornness rooted itself like granite in the set of his jaw.  "Say what?" His voice was mockingly neutral. Like Bucky didn't know exactly how mulishly he was going to argue. Like they hadn't done this dance a hundred times.

"I can't be a girl for you, Stevie. Can't take you to out, can't show you off. Can't tell nobody, and you can't tell nobody about me. I'm bad for you. If anybody finds out that's it, it's over for you. I'm gonna wreck your life. I'm gonna get you in trouble."

"And I toldja before, you're the only kind of trouble I care about," Steve growled. He threaded the fingers of his big hand through Bucky's loose hair and pulled his head back gently so that he could bite and lick at more of the exposed neck. "If I woke up tomorrow and the front page of the paper was a picture of me riding you like a cowgirl I wouldn't care. I'd clip it out and frame it, make everyone jealous of me."

When Bucky laughed it was watery, but it was still a laugh. 

"What a fuckin' sap I got here," he tugged his hair out of Steve's hand and rested his forehead against the other man's. "You say sweet things like that to Peggy?"

"Naw, she likes it better when I swear like a sailor. I tell you, we shoulda joined the Navy the way she gets hot when she hears someone going a blue streak, I need the pointers to keep up."

"You're a liar, Rogers," Bucky stood and shook the stiffness out of his ass before putting his hand on the window sill and hopping lightly inside. "The army didn't want you because you were a scrawny little shit - the Navy couldn't take you 'cause they were scared you'd ruin their reputation with the mouth on you."

"I don't know what the fuck you're talking about." 

They wrapped warm around one another to start. But if Bucky was hesitant and held himself apart from Steve on the bed when he eventually slept, well, at least they were together.


	2. Winter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes it's Steve who struggles with the weight of the world.

It didn't happen much, but sometimes Steve woke up choking and weeping and he couldn't calm himself until he had his hands on Bucky.

He would bury his face in Bucky's neck, large frame shuddering periodically with stifled sobs while whispering apologies too low for Bucky to make sense of. He'd squeeze his eyes shut and wrap his fingers around Bucky's waist hard enough to bruise, and Bucky didn't bruise easy these days.

Mostly Bucky didn't ask questions, just wrapped Steve up as best he could with one arm and rode out the storm. He wasn't good at cooing comfort but he could at least be there, a solid presence to hold onto when it seemed like everything was falling away. Mostly he let Steve carry what Steve seemed to think was his alone to carry. Until he didn't.

"I shouldn't have left you, I should have come back."

They were on the roof, getting some air and getting away from the panicguiltpain smell of Steve's sweat on the sheets.

"You did. Stevie, you and Peg got me out. I'm right here, bud."

Steve shook his big blond head.

"Shoulda got off the train that fuckin' second. Shoulda jumped after you."

Steve was sitting on the lip of the building, looking tragic and noble and manfully weeping into his thousand yard stare. Bucky figured that was bullshit and Steve could bullshit the rest of the world but had lost the privilege of bullshitting Bucky when he turned himself into a science fair project the moment Bucky turned his back.

"If you'da jumped I'd have used what was left of my arm to try to beat the stupid outta you. And I'd fail, and you'd deserve the beating but failing would have damaged my delicate ego."

Half of Steve's mouth twitched into a smile but the rest of his face didn't move. Silence spiralled out from them and Steve went right back to seeing through everything around him and looking into a tangled past.

Bucky sighed and lowered himself to the gritty tar, leaning with his back against the wall between Steve's knees. He wrapped his arm around Steve's calf and pillowed his head on his thigh.

"They tortured you," Steve whispered, and ran his hand over Bucky's hair, petting him and reassuring himself that he was really there.

"You got me out."

"No," Steve swallowed hard and Bucky could hear the thickness of tears in his voice. "No, they tortured you in the future, and I didn't come back for you, honey. I let them keep you and when I finally saw you again they'd broken you so bad you didn't know your own name."

Bucky felt his spine stiffen. The months he'd spent in the possession of Hydra felt like a decade. He had new scars and new fears and new memories he wished he could pull out of his brain with pliers. He couldn't imagine what would have happened if they'd had him longer - as it was Steve had gotten to him just in time to keep Zola from cutting him again. He pulled Steve's leg tighter against his chest.

"How long?"

"Too long."

Bucky snorted. Stubborn prick.

"Baby, how long?"

Steve hung his head and petted harder against Bucky's hair.

"You told me they kept you awake into the fifties. It took years for you to break enough for them to use you. Once they knew they could control you they put you in cryo until they needed you. That was," he sucked in a shaky breath, almost gagging on the air, "nearly seventy years after they put you under the first time."

"And then you found me?"

"No, honey, you found me. You were supposed to kill me. But you remembered me, at least a little. Enough to stop."

Bucky tried to imagine himself trying to kill Steve and all he found inside his head was a howling emptiness. He couldn't make a picture of it, couldn't think of how it would happen, couldn't think of what would drive him to do that.

"I don't understand."

Steve tugged Bucky's hand loose from where it was wrapped around his leg and pulled him upright. He twined both arms around Bucky's still-lithe frame, holding that shape in contrast to the wall of muscle and metal he'd known so recently.

"They made you into a weapon. They hollowed you out and took you away and turned you into a bomb. Like you were a thing," and the shudder in his voice let Bucky know that Steve was crying behind him, "like they had any right to touch you. Like they had the right to breathe the same air as you. And I let them."

Bucky hummed into the night and realized he could see his breath in a puff of vapor in front of him. It was cold on the rooftop but he was warm, soaking in Steve.

"Why did you come back, Steve?"

He felt all those big, strange muscles stiffen around him, like Steve was turning to stone.

"I ain't angry, I'm just askin'."

"I was tired. I wanted a rest."

"Bullshit, you ain't got resting in your disposition."

The arms around his waist drew him in tighter, almost close enough to be painful, almost hard enough to stop the breath in his chest.

"You were getting better and it just made you hurt worse and I couldn't stand to see it."

"How's that work?"

"We - when Hydra had you they had a passphrase to control you and we broke it. Made it so they couldn't command you anymore. It gave you some of your freedom back but made you start to remember more of - more of when they had you."

Bucky squirmed and Steve loosened his tight hold enough for him to turn around and loop his arm behind Steve's neck.

"And I guess I didn't like that so much, if what I remember now is anything to go by."

Steve allowed his head fall forward onto Bucky's shoulder and squeezed him convulsively.

"I'm so sorry I let that happen to you, sugar, I want to take it all away. I saw a chance to take it back and I went for it because knowing how bad they hurt you makes me wanna throw myself off the Chrysler building. I couldn't live with myself in the future if I let them have you in the past."

Bucky put his fingers through the short hair on the back of Steve's head and made a fist, firmly but slowly pulling Steve away from hiding in the hollow of his throat.

"Rogers, if you run in any more circles and they're gonna name track event after you at the next Olympics."

Steve chuckled wetly and Bucky loosened his grip to slip his hand forward and hold the curve of Steve's face in his open palm.

"You're here. You came back for me. You got me out, baby. Again."

"I got you out," Steve said, wide blue eyes tracing the lines of Bucky's lips and cheeks and the hard slash of his jaw and the sweet dip in his chin. "I got you out this time. I didn't let them have you."

And then Steve broke down and bawled like a baby into Bucky's chest.

"It didn't happen this time, it didn't happen," he sobbed over and over while Bucky petted his hair and let his shirt get soaked with snot and sweat and tears.

When they'd been kids Steve had never liked to show when he was hurting. Whether it was growling to cover the rattle in his chest or spitting blood before he'd show his teeth in a fight he was a prickly bundle of aggression, always hiding where he was wounded, squashing down the soft parts of himself so that no one could see them and aim for his heart.

Now he was pouring all those years of secret pain into the cold air to dissipate like the vapor of his hot breath. "It didn't happen," he said, more and more quietly, and with each wave of tears and repetition he sounded more sure.

Bucky held him and rubbed his hand over the broad back and heaving shoulders.

"It didn't happen, baby, and what did happen isn't your fault. I made my choice to join up with the Howlies, I made my choice to get on that train. It's war, shit happens and shit is what I signed up for. You didn't do nothin' wrong, Stevie. My guy. You're takin' good care of me."

Maybe someday he'd even believe it.


End file.
